Reagan: No Deals With Hijackers U.s. Action Ruled Out As Danger To Hostages

WASHINGTON — President Reagan declared Tuesday that the United States ''will never make concessions to terrorists'' but suggested that military retaliation would be an improper response to the holding of American hostages in Beirut.

''You can't start shooting until you have someone in your gunsights,'' he said, acknowledging the difficulty in identifying the terrorists and their political affiliations.

''If you just aim in the general direction and kill some people, well, then, you're a terrorist too,'' Reagan said during a nationally televised news conference.

The goal of the administration's present policy, Reagan said, is the ''safe return'' of the 40 hostages held for the fifth day in the hijacking of TWA flight 847. The hijacking took place Friday during an Athens-to-Rome flight.

''I have to wait it out as long as those people are threatened and alive,'' Reagan said.

Reagan offered no hints of how long that wait might be or of how soon a solution might be at hand.

Despite his repeated insistence that a military solution was too risky, Reagan announced several actions that might prevent future hijackings, including a possible resumption of use of armed sky marshals on some international flights.

He also said the State Department had issued an advisory to American travelers that the Athens International Airport has lax security, and that the Federal Aviation Administration would ask all U.S. airlines to consider whether they still want to fly into that airport unless security is increased. Reagan also urged U.S. citizens not to visit any Middle Eastern country that does not ''publicly condemn and disassociate itself from this atrocity.'' Despite some conciliatory comments, Reagan emphasized that the United States would not acquiesce to any agreement or negotiations that could be construed as ''rewarding the terrorists for their crime.''

Reagan's remarks seemed to be a deliberate effort to balance tough talk with caution. He stressed repeatedly that he would decline to answer questions that might jeopardize the release of the hostages.

At one point, Reagan expressed his sense of frustration in treading a course between toughness and caution.

''I am as frustrated as anyone,'' he said. ''I've pounded a few walls when I'm alone about this.''

Replying to a question, Reagan said that he would act no differently if members of his own family had been aboard the flight and had been taken hostage.

During the press conference, Reagan answered questions about distinctions between this crisis and the hostage-taking in Iran that blighted Jimmy Carter's presidency and contributed to the Democrat's defeat.

Reagan said the difference between the two cases was that the Iranian action was ''state-sponsored terrorism'' conducted by the government of the Ayatollah Khomeini, while this hijacking was committed by a terrorist group with indeterminate ties.

Reagan acknowledged that Nabih Berri, leader of the Amal Shiites and Lebanon's justice minister, was the key to the situation since he became the self-appointed middleman. But Reagan refused to equate Berri's involvement with state-sponsored terrorism.

Reagan said Berri was acting as an Amal leader with his own militia, not as a Cabinet member, and that to link Berri's official position to state terrorism would ''give the government of Lebanon a cohesiveness it doesn't have.''

Reagan refused to characterize Berri as the problem, the solution or part of the terrorist effort.

But the president said he would hold Berri ''responsible'' if he returned the hostages to terrorist control, which Berri has vowed to do if the United States refuses to ask Israel to release 700 to 800 Shiites now in Israeli prisons.

Asked why he didn't ''lean on Israel'' to release them, Reagan said Israel had already planned to let them go in stages before the hijacking.

''But it has now been tied to where such a movement would be, in effect, giving in to the terrorists. And then . . . who is safe? That's all the terrorists have to know, that they can succeed and get what they want.''

Reagan conceded that Americans have become terrorist targets of those angered by the close ties between the United States and Israel, and that Israel's taking the Shiites from Lebanon into its own country was probably a violation of international law.

But despite the proliferation of terrorist groups around the world, Reagan told one questioner, who paraphrased a favorite presidential line, that America is still standing tall.